Aubrey stiffened at my wild tone.
‘Perhaps you could introduce it into conversation,’ Selwyn said. ‘Gently, without scaring her.’
‘She’ll be upset whatever you say.’ I faced Aubrey. ‘She will. She’s known you for a space of hours, and she’s to go to Ireland—’
‘London, actually, first. I need to go to London. Tomorrow.’
‘The day after tomorrow. You said she’d go the day after.’
‘I’ve changed my mind.’ His mouth twisted with the unpleasantness of his duty. ‘Look, Mrs Parr, I have to be honest. I won’t be going to Ireland. I can’t travel to a neutral country. I’m not allowed. And as I’m sure you’re aware, living so near the coast, all routes are going to be shut down soon, for the invasion. So I’m going to London, where I’ll hire a nanny, a proper registered person, to take her immediately to Ireland.’
‘You’re not even going to take her yourself?’
‘I’ve just explained that I can’t.’
We stared at each other. My face flamed. Selwyn’s hand enclosed mine. I looked away from Aubrey and down at Selwyn’s hand. My eyes were glassy with tears but I wouldn’t let them fall. Inside me a fortress crumbled.
There was a thumping on the stairs. Pamela’s voice came, a great shout, as if we were two hundred yards away. ‘Ellen! I can’t find Popsy! She was in my bed and now she’s gone! Where’s Popsy?’
Popsy was a peg doll. Perhaps the one I’d prised from her hand when she was sleeping. Aubrey rose to his feet. ‘I’ll go and help her. See if I can’t tell her. Start, at least.’
Selwyn and I remained a few moments more at the breakfast table. I sat silently while he tried to piece together a last day for Pamela. We would all go to church, it being Sunday, and then I’d take Pamela to say goodbye to Lucy while Selwyn showed Aubrey the mill. ‘He might enjoy seeing the turbine, I suppose.’
He spoke unsteadily. I took his hand.
‘After lunch you could take Pamela to Upton Hall,’ he went on. ‘Bill Kennet needs to see her, and Althea. In fact we could all go to the Hall for tea. Do you think that would be nice?’
His fingers tightened on mine. I couldn’t answer for the tears raining down my face.
Pamela appeared, wearing her straw hat. I spoke to her in a soft voice. ‘Did Daddy tell you about Ireland?’
‘Mm.’ She tipped her hat at her reflection in the hall mirror, swung away, turned back, tipped her hat once more. I realized she was trying to do it the way William Kennet did.
‘Mm, he did, or mm, he didn’t?’
‘He did.’
She brushed past me and went out of the front door.
Lucy had a dark-blue beret slanting over her forehead. It suited her, made her sallow face and black eyes more dramatic.
‘You should wear that more often,’ I told her as we went through the lychgate of the church. ‘You look quite dashing.’
‘You’ve bin cryin.’
‘Thank you for pointing it out. Pamela’s going tomorrow.’
‘Oh, God Almighty.’
We filed into the shadowed transept. Pamela tried to keep her voice down in church but it was so clear, so piercing always. ‘Can we sit with the Hornes?’
‘Shush, Pamela. Your voice is like a steam whistle.’ I glanced back at Selwyn. He was silhouetted in the doorway, a head taller than Aubrey. I couldn’t see his face but he would see mine. I gestured towards Lucy and Mrs Horne, to say that we were going with them. ‘Of course we can,’ I said to Pamela.
Old Mrs Horne and Lucy’s father were ahead of us, Mrs Horne broad-backed in a yellow frock, and leaning heavily on her son’s shoulder as she walked. We followed them into a pew. ‘Sit between me and Lucy,’ I whispered to Pamela.
‘I always sit with you, Ell. Let me go between Lucy and Mrs Horne.’
‘All right.’
She scrambled past our knees and wedged herself between Lucy and her grandmother. Lucy looked up at Selwyn and Aubrey, as they walked murmuring down the aisle with Lady Brock. Lady Brock squeezed my shoulder with her gloved hand as she passed. We rose to our feet and the vicar said, ‘O come, let us sing to the Lord, let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.’ I mouthed the words. Tomorrow I’d be bidding Pamela goodbye at my front door, watching her leave, and then going back inside. It was unimaginable. How would I go through the house, in and out of all the rooms? The dressing room, especially, where she slept: I didn’t know how I was ever going to go in there again. I’d have to move the bed, shift the little table. Make it different somehow.
How would Aubrey manage, with one arm? He wouldn’t be able to hold her hand in London, not if he was carrying her suitcase. She’d have to be very good, and not run ahead among the crowds.
‘In His hand are the deep places in the earth,’ I recited. ‘The strength of the hills is His also.’
We left the church and made our way to the Hornes’ house. It was extraordinarily warm for the end of March. The heat made the day strange, because the trees were still bare. Pamela shrugged off her cardigan, and walked ahead of me and Lucy, between Mrs Horne and her son. If one could call it walking: an hour in church, doing no more than sit, stand and kneel, had built up an intolerable head of steam in her. Every step was a jump, every fourth step a leap into the air, accompanied by a shriek. ‘That’s a fox,’ she told Mr Horne. ‘That’s what they do at night. They play about at night, and go like this.’ She leaped and shrieked again, and I heard Mr Horne, a kennelman all his life, say, ‘My word, Pam. You’re a brave fox,’ as he took her hand. In that moment I honestly would have preferred her to go then, just to vanish in an instant, and spare me the agony of waiting the rest of the day and the night.
‘Let’s have a tot in our cuppa.’ Lucy sniffed. ‘Bloody hell.’ I saw her sharp little face, the wetness in her narrowed eyes. We grasped each other’s hands, and then parted to climb the steps.
I watched Pamela bend over in the long grass, trying for the last time to feed Maurice, who was as recalcitrant as ever. The brandy hadn’t been a good idea. Mr Horne had said it would stiffen our sinews but it was only cloying my mouth, bringing me closer to tears. How close could one go to tears without actually crying? I had a pain in my throat from it.
‘Oh Maurice, you are sweet,’ I heard Pamela say.
I went over to the long grass, and put my hand on her shoulder. I’d been the one who’d told her that her mother was dead. I remembered her in the privy here, her face lit by the heart-shaped hole in the door. Won’t be long, Pammie, her mother used to say. A smaller child, in the grip of a great grief. It was my job to tell her now. ‘Pamela, tomorrow you’re going away to your cousins in Ireland.’
‘I know.’ She didn’t turn her head. ‘We’re going on a train to London, and then on a boat to an island, and another lady’s coming with us. Daddy told me after breakfast. He said you’d probably let me take the Peg family, but I should ask. So can I?’
‘Ireland. Not island. Though it is an island …’
‘That’s it. Ireland.’ Still holding the stem of grass, she straightened up and looked at me. ‘Can I take them?’
‘Please,’ I said, as a reflex.
‘Please?’
‘Yes.’
She took my hand, put the grass stem into it. ‘You try.’
‘No, I don’t think he’s hungry.’ I felt too weak, suddenly, to cry. ‘We’d better go home. The Hornes will want their dinner soon. Say goodbye to Maurice.’
‘Bye, Maurice.’ We went back towards the house. ‘Bye, heart lav,’ she said. ‘And blackcurrants. Oh – Ellen. You’d better bring your other hat, the one that stays on, because we’re crossing the sea. It would be a shame if that straw one got blown away into the waves. Nobody’d fetch it for you, that’s for sure.’
I heard Elizabeth’s voice, when she said ‘that’s for sure’.